


Having come this far

by Petra



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The West Wing
Genre: Alderaan, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Pesach | Passover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-17 00:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14176872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Petra/pseuds/Petra
Summary: Leia inherits Bail Organa’s chief political operative, Josh Lyman. They celebrate a bunch of Seders over the cycles.





	Having come this far

**Author's Note:**

> Why is Josh Lyman in Space? Jimmy Smits is Bail Organa and Matt Santos. In this case, he's Bail Organa, but he has a Josh Lyman.
> 
> Thanks for beta-reading to Lomedet, Hannah, Sage, and Jamjar. All remaining errors are mine.

Breha shows up one day with a baby in her arms with no warning, no "We were thinking of adopting," nada. It's Chief Steward Lyman's job to spin it. It's a good thing the monarchy of Alderaan is crosspollinated with democracy and Bail's one of the best senators they've had in living memory. Timing-wise, it doesn't hurt that the galaxy's falling apart and a cute kid is a great distraction.

Josh lasts about two weeks before he asks Bail, "Where did she come from?"

Bail goes tense around the eyes. "Leia is a war orphan we have taken into our home and we will raise her as our own."

"Oh, come on, boss. You can baffle 'em with bantha shit, but you can't baffle me with my own bantha shit."

Bail's been exhausted since he adopted a kid--obviously--and since everything started going out the airlock--obviously. He gives Josh a smile with a hint of the good old Organa charm and taps the side of his nose. "Good thing it's the truth."

"I'll figure it out."

"I know." Bail lowers his voice. "But I'll never tell you, and you'll never tell her."

Josh has been working with him long enough that they have codes to discuss half the galaxy. This isn't a code, it's a truth. "Yes, sir."

*

It doesn't take very long to figure it out, in the galactic scheme of things. Leia grows up enough to be a person instead of an infant--enough to run away from her parents on her chubby legs and hide under Josh's desk when she's mad at them.

When he sees her furious eyes under his desk, he knows half of where she came from, and there's a lump in his throat. He sends her parents a note so they won't worry and lets her stay.

After a few minutes, she tugs on his trousers. "Eat? Now?"

The week before, he could've given her all the treats in the city, but Leia can't read the calendar. She can't know she's dropping by right after the yearly clean-out of everything worth eating. Josh raises his voice. "Donnatella?"

"What?" Donnatella calls from the outer office.

"Do you have any fruit or--" he stops himself from naming things kids will eat, since he doesn't want Leia to get excited "--anything at all that isn't crackers or caf?"

"Not for you," Donnatella says. She comes into his doorway and frowns at him. "Why?"

Josh points at his desk.

Donnatella raises her eyebrows and says, "Whatever that means, no."

Josh mouths, "Leia. Here. Now."

Donnatella says, "Oh. Sweetheart!" and runs back to her desk, returning a moment later with a handful of green pluckberries. She kneels by Josh's side and offers the berries to Leia. It would look incredibly awkward if anybody dropped by. Josh hopes nobody will. "I didn't realize we had a visitor."

"Hi," Leia says, then, “Berry!” Or, well, “Bewwy!” but she’s trying. She takes one of the berries and eats it, then smiles at Donnatella. Her teeth are green.

She's definitely Padmé Amidala's daughter. Josh's stomach hurts.

Donnatella beams back at her. "What can we do for you, your Highness?"

“More bewwy. Please. More hide. No kiss Auntie Cays."

"Okay," Josh says easily. "As Chief Steward of the Royal House of Alderaan and whatever, I can make sure Her Honorable Ladyship doesn't require kisses from you." He can certainly put a bug in her ear about it while she's visiting for Pesach.

Leia looks at him solemnly and says, "No kiss Auntie Cays," again.

"You don't have to kiss Auntie Carys," Donnatella says. "Josh doesn't remember how to talk like a person anymore. Can I take you back to your mom?"

Josh bites his tongue so he won't try to answer that.

Leia nods and holds her hands up to Donnatella, who picks her up.

*

The next cycle, Leia is talking a click a minute. Her Auntie Carys comes back to Aldera for all the high holy days, but this time she knows better than to ask Leia for kisses.

Leia recites the four questions at the Seder, her words unhesitating.

Josh elbows Bail. "You're going to have a hell of a primary election someday."

Bail smiles in deep satisfaction. "I know."

*

Donnatella kisses Josh goodbye at their front door and turns left instead of right, now, because the Princess-and-Junior-Senator needs a competent Chief of Staff as much as her father does, and for all his searching he couldn't find her a better one.

Sometimes Josh can't face how proud he is of them. When that happens, he calls Bail and Breha, who have the same problem, and they pretend they're not crying together.

*

When--

Josh is working with the Alliance when it happens, not by Bail's side, where he should've--

Donnatella--not for nothing, but if Josh was a Jedi, Darth Vader would be in itty bitty pieces just like--

Donnatella was with Leia, and Josh knows, everyone knows, she did her best.

Leia is all in one piece, except for her eyes. She falls into Josh's arms and does not cry, which is how he knows she's not working right. She should be crying. He's crying on her, and here she is, as safe and sound as anyone could be after everything she's been through. "I'm sorry," he says, and she says, and it all gets tangled, but she's still not crying.

That's when Josh starts worrying about her. Well, no. He's been worrying about her since she was a tiny lump in blankets in her mother's arms--her second mother--he's crying harder, now, thinking of her orphaned all over again.

But her refusal to grieve eats at him.

*

Leia finds being in the daily working of the Rebellion invigorating. It gives her energy and then demands she uses it all. She has no attention for anything else.

The cycle swings around so quickly that if Josh wasn't with her, she wouldn't note the passage of the months. Without the seasons of her planet--her chest aches--it seems like madness to observe its holy days.

But they were never its holy days to begin with, and she has seen the reams of arguments over when to place them with respect to different calendars, so she bows to Josh's awareness of time.

They have a public Seder, because it's a thing that's expected of Princess Leia and Chief Steward Lyman, and Josh cries.

They have a private Seder, for what Josh might have called her "intimate circle" back on Alderaan but wouldn't anymore. They don't have the same space between them for a wink and a nudge.

The Haggadah translates smoothly into Shyriiwook, especially since the Empire has claimed Kashyyyk. Chewbacca roars with the pain of loss as much as any human ever has. Leia hopes that if he considers conversion--if he hasn't already--he talks through the requirements with anyone other than her. Someone else can explain circumcision to the Wookiee.

C-3PO translates for Chewbacca, adding his own commentary about Wookiee culture that Chewbacca argues with as the night progresses.

R2-D2 offers his own corrections. Bickering is traditional.

She might've predicted that Han is amenable to any occasion that requires eating and drinking to excess.

Luke, after asking the four questions, falls asleep from the Manysh'vytz, his face tear-streaked but relaxed for once.

Leia raises her glass with Josh. "Next cycle in--" She can't say it.

Josh has said thousands of things for her family for longer than she's been alive. He says this for her, his voice rough with tears. "Next cycle in Aldera."

They echo him, everyone who can speak Basic.

Leia cries for the first time since--

Chewbacca--who'd had quite a discussion about homeworlds and loss with them before he agreed to come--says something that C-3PO translates as, "Next cycle in Rwookrrorro." Everyone raises a glass and toasts with him.

Leia can't make herself stop crying, but she can drink to Chewbacca’s hope. He has hope when she does not.

They all try to give her strength by embracing her, Josh with the ease of long practice, Chewbacca delicately, as if he might break her with his strength, Han patting her on the shoulder.

“We could be in Coronet City,” Han offers.

“Coronet City,” Josh echoes, and Leia toasts with Chewbacca.

Leia wipes her eyes, but it doesn’t actually help her stop crying. “Next cycle,” she says, her voice a wreck. “Next cycle on Coruscant.” To hell with Imperial Center. They’ll take it back.

“On Coruscant!” Josh and Han say. Chewbacca roars it, and it wakes Luke up.

“What’d I miss?” he asks fuzzily.

“A lot,” Leia says, sniffling.

“Oh, Leia,” he says, and gets up, almost falling over on her as he hugs her. “Here, I’ve got a tissue.”

“We were making plans for where we’re celebrating next cycle,” Josh says. “Tradition.”

“Huh,” Luke says. “Not Tatooine.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Where do you want to go instead?” Leia asks.

Luke smiles. “Everywhere.”

They echo, “Everywhere!” in Basic and Shyriiwook, and they all drink to that.

*

After Cloud City, when Luke whispers his appalling truth into Leia's ear, she hugs him. He still feels like the same person in her arms. His secret feels like something incredibly dangerous, but also discoverable. If Vader knows, someone else will also find out, sooner or later.

Someday, political maneuvering will matter again. She doesn't try to explain opposition research to Luke while he's recovering--his heart hurts, and he looks like he's not sure who he is, though Leia's sure of him. "You're not alone," she says to him.

He laughs wetly on her shoulder. "I guess not."

She thinks of the only family she has left. "Josh can help."

"He's a gene-slicer?"

"He's good at making people think the way he wants them to think." Leia considers that. "If he has enough lead time so he doesn't react in public."

Luke winces. "I'm glad I didn't find this out in public."

"Me too."

"All right."

She tells Josh in a secured compartment on the _Falcon_. He's sitting down, so he doesn't fall down. He goes pale instead and says, "Well, kriff, that's--poor guy. Vader has a kid? How? Poor Luke. Skywalker. Skywalker--oh. Oh. Oh no. Have you had a gene test lately?"

"For what?"

"The normal stuff. Anything, anybody have your genes on file, anyone run a midichlorian scan on you, anyone maybe do a test to see who in the Rebel Alliance might be a good match for you if you happened to need an organ transplant, that kind of thing?"

Leia tries to remember her medical history. "Not that I know of."

"Right. Let's find Luke, a medical droid, and a slicer."

The medical bay has private consultation rooms without scanning, which is a mercy. Their slicer is Y'let, a woman a little older than Leia with short hair in a coverall whose fingers fly too fast to see. She swears secrecy on pain of terrible consequences to be specified later--honestly, Josh is so much better when he plans things in advance--and watches the proceedings with fascination.

The droid's silent readout pops up: "Probability of fraternity: 99.9%" and Leia sighs and leans against Luke on the biobed. Something falls into place in her mind. "Oh," she says.

He stares at it and turns pink. "I didn't--I didn't know that."

"Right," Josh says. "We knew that part. Y'let, could you do your thing?"

She waves vaguely in the direction of her head, approximating a salute, and removes the events of the last few minutes from the droid's memory. When she turns it back on, it asks, "How can I help you?"

Leia smiles at it. "We'd like the room for a private consultation for fifteen minutes on my authorization. Thank you."

"Acknowledged, Leia Organa," it says, and leaves.

Leia nods to Y'let. "Thank you for your help. Please remember this is a need-to-know item."

"Sure," Y'let says. "Happy to help. I'm just glad you found each other."

"Yeah, thanks," Luke says, somewhat dazedly.

Y'let leaves and the door closes behind her.

It's quiet in the room for a moment.

"So," Josh says. "Luke, have you wondered who your mother is? Because I know that one. I can't tell Leia, but I can tell you."

"I'm right here."

Josh waves a hand at her from a meter away. "Shhh, I'm taking to Luke."

Luke coughs. "I have wondered, but--"

"Your mother was Padmé Amidala Naberrie--"

"Josh, what--"

"--former Queen and Senator of the planet of Naboo--"

"Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"--an honorable woman--"

"Every Purim!"

"--a great orator--"

"For years!"

\--and an excellent shot."

"With those headdresses, Josh!"

"Queen?" Luke asks.

"It was an elected position," Leia says in unison with Josh. She glances at him, and he gestures for her to go on. "Naboo's pre-Imperial government was idiosyncratically named and segregated by species. Not perfect. Neither was Amidala, if she married Darth Vader." She makes a face.

"She didn't," Josh says quickly. "If they got married at all, it was while he was still a Jedi, before the whole Sith thing."

"That's good," Luke says faintly.

"Spinnable," Josh says.

"Is it?" Leia asks.

"For the kids who blew up the Death Star? We tell the truth: you had no idea, you were horrified when you found out, and the only good thing is you found each other."

"Yeah." Luke offers his hand to Leia. She takes it and squeezes hard. "Okay. Okay?"

She nods. "Okay."

*

It's not that easy. Nothing ever is. But it gets easier to carry when the Empire falls, and Vader is gone. Their genetic parents' names are in her file, and in Luke's, along with their real parents.

Josh preps them for the news drop before he leaks it to the right casters.

Luke hates the entire process. He argues that Vader turned back before the end, and when both Josh and Leia point out that no one else cares, he goes Jedi blank on them. It's up to Leia to do most of the public-facing work, but then it usually is.

The newscaster leads with, "Your father is Darth Vader. I can't imagine what that's like."

Leia corrects her. "He was my biological father, and when I found out a few months ago, I was as appalled as you are now."

"How did you handle the news?" the newscaster asks, as they've practiced.

Leia asks her, not the camera, "Are you proud of what everyone in your family did during the war?"

"No, but--"

"I only spent time with him in close quarters once, when he tortured me," Leia says, and shivers.

There are not many interviewers who will use the words "allegedly tortured" to a subject's face. Fewer still if she is visibly pregnant.

She understands Luke's objections, but she has work to do. Vader has taken too much from her already.

*

"He's not my real uncle. Why do I have to be polite to him? Why do I have to go?"

Leia pushes away the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. "He served the House of Organa for longer than you've been alive and helped build the New Republic. The least you can do is smile and pass the charoset."

Ben rolls his eyes. "The least I can do is stay out of his way and your way. He's annoying and you're annoying and I just want to be alone."

"That's not what family obligations mean."

"I hate my family!" Ben yells, and stomps away.

"I know how you feel," Leia says under her breath.

Later, she wishes that hadn't been how Josh's last Pesach started.

*

It's not as bad as Ben's last Pesach at home. At least Josh died of natural causes.

*

The Seder just after Crait feels different. Poe knows all the stories already, and he's lost enough that he should have understood them before. Now they're real; now he mourns differently.

Rey and Finn lie close enough together that Leia would suspect them of irreverence if they weren't listening so carefully. They know what bitterness is. They need to learn sweetness.

Rose, who helped gather the food, rescues the afikoman from a porg just before it gets devoured.

Leia leans against Chewbacca. She glares at the doorway, wondering whether lightsabers are effective against prophets, in case one comes this year. The last prophecy that touched her family wreaked enough destruction that she would try.

No one comes, not even Luke.

Leia's not sure whether that's a relief.

But there are still places to go, still homes to take back, still love to fight for. She has everything she’s ever needed.


End file.
